Work Text:
Stephen almost—almost—missed the stims.
It wasn't a real craving; not the bad kind, not the desperate kind. Just a thought. Just a mental habit he hadn't quite broken yet, to feel like this and know there was something that could fix it, something that could make it go away.
The worst part was, it hadn't even been a particularly bad day, by Medlab standards. Just a long one, that was all. Long, tedious; nothing serious, nothing complicated or difficult or even interesting, and he should've been grateful for it, because the fewer people who needed Stephen Franklin to save their lives any given day, the better. It wasn't that he wanted anyone to have caught a novel alien virus or developed sudden inexplicable complications that were going to take every ounce of his concentration to deal with. But—
But that had left him with nothing but small problems, stacking up on each other, sucking away his time and his energy by slow degrees, making the day endless. And he could remember a time when he hadn't had to deal with that, wouldn't have even if he'd had to spend three shifts straight with a projectile-vomiting Pak'ma'ra; remembered it, and some stupid part of him wanted, helplessly, mindlessly, to have that again, and didn't care how terrible an idea it was.
He rubbed a hand across his face, and heard more than saw the transport tube doors open at last. He shuffled off, turned down the corridor toward his quarters, and told himself this would help: he'd settle in for a nice quiet evening, heat up something quick that he could shovel into his face without thinking about it too hard, go to bed early. That would be nice.
He turned the corner, glanced ahead out of pure habit to his own door, and then stopped; and suddenly there wasn't quite as much room for dull, resigned exhaustion, not with all this warmth blooming right through the middle of it, the more so because he hadn't been expecting it in the least.
"Marcus," he said.
Marcus looked up, and smiled. "Stephen—what a pleasure."
Stephen raised an eyebrow, wry. "You're standing outside my quarters. You can't possibly be surprised to see me."
"Well, no," Marcus allowed. "But a gift doesn't have to be a surprise to be a pleasure; I stand by the sentiment."
"Sure," Stephen said. "So, how many places are you bleeding from?"
It was a guess. But it was a pretty good one, Stephen figured. Marcus had a talent for getting himself grievously injured, and for utterly failing to take himself to Medlab when he did—if anything, him voluntarily showing up at Stephen's door to let Stephen patch him up was progress.
Marcus gasped, theatrical, and set a hand to his chest like an offended 2140s ingenue. "Stephen. Why, I never—as if abusing your generosity were the only reason I could possibly be here. I'm quite insulted."
"All my apologies," Stephen said, and looked him over anyway; and the dark Ranger uniform, all those disguising folds and textures, didn't make it easy to tell for sure, but he didn't seem to be gushing any vital bodily fluids, at least. "And instead you're here to—?"
Whatever the answer was, he wasn't going to mind. Already the picture in his head, the shape of that quiet, lonely evening he'd had stretching out in front of him, was changing, and getting to spend an hour or two sniping fondly at Marcus, listening to Marcus tell ridiculous stories about the last incredibly dangerous Ranger mission he'd been on, maybe even goading him into cooking them both dinner, sounded pretty damn good.
He was already reaching past Marcus to open the door, as Marcus said, "I can't believe you have to ask, but as you are imminently going to be reminded," and then the light changed, and the door swished open, and the rest of the sentence became just as unnecessary as Marcus had implied it would.
Stephen blinked.
The balloons were strung up in an uneven line, almost all the way across the room; the change in the airflow, the open door, made a few of them bob and bounce off each other. They were round, silver, with bright block letters in half a dozen different colors that spelled out—almost spelled out—HAPY ANNIVERSAR.
"It's our first anniversary, honey," Marcus said brightly.
Stephen pressed his mouth into a line so he wouldn't laugh, and turned to look at him.
Marcus glanced at the balloons, and then at him, and cleared his throat. "As I imagine you must've guessed, I was tragically unable to obtain more than one 'P' or 'Y'. Though thankfully there were plenty of 'A's to go round."
"I can see that," Stephen agreed, dry, but then it was—he couldn't stop it anymore, the way his mouth wanted to slant itself wide across his face, and he shook his head, rubbed a hand across his jaw and did laugh. "I can't believe you."
"Oh, come now, it was the least I could do for my loving husband," Marcus said, and Stephen rolled his eyes, snorted, and firmly ignored the idiotic thump of his heart in his chest.
He stepped inside and touched the dangling ribbon of the closest balloon. "Tell me I get some flowers out of this, too."
It was a joke; but he glanced back over his shoulder at Marcus, ready to magnanimously forgive him for the oversight, and instead Marcus looked at him and then away, and said, "Ah—"
Stephen turned back around, and looked.
It was the balloons—they were so much, so eye-catching. Of course they'd caught his attention first, and kept it.
But there were flowers. A vase Stephen hadn't had any reason to pull out in years, set right in the center of the counter that framed his drab little kitchenette; and they weren't just plastic daisies, Stephen realized, moving closer. They were real. Which meant either one hell of a shipping expense, or one hell of a bribe for the staff in Hydroponics.
He reached for them, just for the sake of it: the sheer indulgence of rubbing a petal between his fingers, feeling that particular waxy softness that artificial flowers never quite got right. They were lilies, mostly, big bright stars, some smaller white flowers in between spacing them out; but just to one side of the center, tucked in there amongst the mass of the rest like a secret, was a rose.
"Okay, I'll go back to letting you enjoy the joke in a minute," Stephen said quietly, "but these are—these are beautiful, Marcus. Thank you."
"And in return," Marcus said, equally low, "in all seriousness: it seemed like the least I could do, considering the wholly unearned lengths to which you went to save my life."
Stephen shut his eyes.
He wanted to come back with something—something easy, mild; something that acknowledged the whole mess and swept past it at the same time, and took them right back to the comfortable joke. But he couldn't think of anything, and if he had, he couldn't have said it, his throat closed up tight, choked shut.
Marcus didn't mean any of the dozen other times he'd ended up in Medlab: not when Neroon had almost killed him; not when he'd come back from his missions millimeters from pneumothorax thanks to a broken rib, or sepsis from a third-degree burn he hadn't taken the time to clean; not even that time he'd been in Downbelow when the wrong ventilation conduit blew, and he'd almost suffocated.
He meant—god, had it only been last November? It felt like so much longer, to Stephen. He'd wanted so badly to be angry at Marcus for it, and he had been, but it had felt almost deliberate, an extra twist of the knife: that Marcus had done what he'd done to save Susan, and so Stephen had to, couldn't not, be grateful that Marcus had used Stephen's own goddamn notes to as good as kill himself, even if he hated it at the same time—
Usually, he thought he should've been faster. He told himself he didn't know why it had taken him so long to come up with it. But the truth was, he didn't know what had made it occur to him, what happenstance signal leaping between his neurons had let the idea take shape in his head; and he knew how easily it might never have come to him at all, how easily he might have found himself living in a universe where Marcus Cole was, for all intents and purposes, gone.
And yet he wasn't. Because two months ago, he'd thought of it. He'd thought of it, and he'd taken Marcus, the cryotube, that goddamn alien device, down to the planet—down to Draal, down to the Great Machine.
More than enough energy, down there, to restore one little life. And the right kind of energy, too, because the Great Machine could do almost the same thing the device did, could keep its Guardians alive long past their natural span—but it didn't have to steal that life from anybody else to do it.
Two months ago; and now, there was Marcus. Awake, aware. Alive.
The silence in the room stretched. Stephen stood there, unable to work out how to break it.
And then Marcus said, more lightly, "Besides, I suspect people don't take as many opportunities as they ought to give you beautiful things. So I thought it best not to let this one pass me by."
It was enough—the sound of his voice, that warm wry tone of his. Stephen felt the vise around his throat ease, and breathed; skimmed a fingertip unsteadily along the edge of the petal he'd been touching, and blinked his eyes open, and managed to say it again: "Thank you." He made himself look at Marcus, scraped together half a smile from somewhere and pinned it carefully into place. "I'm afraid I didn't get you anything."
"Oh, never fear. I like to imagine we've agreed we're going to alternate," Marcus said. "Which means you're on the hook for next year."
Because, Stephen thought, there was going to be a next year. Because if Marcus tried to get himself killed again before then, well, Stephen was just going to have make sure to be there to fix it. And as quickly as that, he found himself smiling for real after all. "Duly noted."
"And now we'd best get going, or we'll miss our reservation."
"Our reservation," Stephen repeated. "Marcus, are you serious?"
"Absolutely," Marcus said immediately. "Go on, go on. Put on something nice, hmm?"
Stephen aimed a flat look at him. "You're just wearing your Ranger uniform. I don't see why I should have to dress up—"
Marcus adopted an expression of profound, wounded affront. "I got you flowers, you know," he said with a sniff. "One might think you'd be willing to repay the gesture with a little eye candy, at a minimum."
Stephen huffed. "I thought you said I was on the hook for next year."
But he was already moving toward his bedroom, his closet, the battle as good as lost before it had even begun.
Marcus had indeed been serious. They did have a reservation.
Stephen had been a little worried he'd overdone it, given the flushed startled way Marcus had looked at him when he'd come back out of his bedroom in the nicest suit he owned. But he definitely hadn't, since Marcus was now steering him straight into Fresh Air.
"Marcus," Stephen hissed, because jokes were all well and good, and they could walk away again and have a laugh about it without actually wasting the maître d's time.
But Marcus shushed him haughtily, stepped forward and said, "Cole, for two," to the extremely professional woman standing by the entryway, and she checked something and nodded instead of smiling apologetically and telling them there was a three-week wait for walk-ins.
Marcus had actually planned for this, Stephen grasped dimly. But, well—Marcus certainly did like to push as far as he could get away with, and then a hell of a lot farther just to see what would happen.
At first, at least, it was easy enough to go along with it. Marcus bowed a little and offered Stephen an elbow, old-fashioned and theatrical as always, and Stephen rolled his eyes and took it, and then they were off, weaving their way through the tables behind the maître d'. That part was fine.
But once they actually reached their table, it was—it was a bit isolated, quiet, set apart, candlelit. Stephen sat, automatic, and accepted a menu, and then they were left there together. And he found himself looking across the table at Marcus, with the whole vast stretch of the station's central core rotating away above them, exactly the sort of view Fresh Air was famous for, and trying to remember the last time anybody had done anything like this for him; and he couldn't.
His heart was pounding. His head was empty. He looked at the menu, but the letters on it stubbornly refused to form words. It had been quiet for a little too long—he needed to say something, except he had absolutely no idea what.
At the very least, Marcus didn't seem to be doing much better. He was sitting very still, and his hands were closed a little more tightly than they needed to be around the corners of his menu, his gaze a little too fixed for him to actually be reading it.
But just as Stephen was telling himself firmly that even embarrassing himself at Fresh Air was better than another night alone in his quarters would've been, the waitress came back—and not to take their orders, but to deposit a bottle of champagne with a massive red bow tied around it.
As quickly as that, it was funny all over again. Stephen snorted, met Marcus's eyes over the bottle and laughed outright, shaking his head, and Marcus made his face a parody of innocence. "Goodness, how thoughtful," he marveled, as if he hadn't arranged for it on purpose, even though he definitely had. "How do you suppose they knew?"
"Yes, how did they," Stephen said, and he made his tone as flat as it would get but he was still smiling, idiotic, helpless.
It got easier, after that. When they ordered, Marcus pulled out the pet names again, batting his eyelashes at Stephen and saying, "And you were thinking about the salmon, weren't you, sweetheart?"
But he wasn't wrong; Stephen had been.
The food was quick to arrive, and it tasted fantastic. Even better, once the waitress was gone again, Marcus let the joke slide for a minute—asked Stephen about his day, and got a few more medical mishaps in return than he'd probably wanted to hear about, but he listened anyway, wincing in all the right places when Stephen built his way up to the worst details of who'd managed to get what stuck where.
Stephen let himself go on about it longer than he should have, and then made up for it by turning the tables, inviting Marcus to spin out a very heavily edited version of the last mission he'd been on. It wasn't hard to tell that Marcus was stretching the truth, given that the way he told it, everything had gone perfectly and Marcus hadn't gotten himself hurt even a little bit doing anything noble or stupid or both, but—
But it was nice to imagine it could've happened that way, this once.
"—and then I spent the whole flight back singing every song from HMS Pinafore," Marcus concluded, "which as it turns out everyone else on the ship knew and loved, and they gave me a standing ovation for my trouble."
"Mmhmm," Stephen said. "How unexpectedly validating that must have been."
"Oh, you have no idea," Marcus told him warmly.
All told, Stephen was surprised to lower his fork and hit nothing but his plate—to realize he'd finished that salmon, and as delicious as it had been, he hadn't been paying half as much attention to it as he had to Marcus.
Marcus had, of course, also arranged for them to be brought an incredibly large, dense chocolate dessert that had been made in the shape of a heart. Stephen gave him a withering look over the top of it, because that was clearly exactly what he wanted to happen, and Marcus grinned at him and picked up a fork. "I'd offer to feed it to you," he said, "but I do worry the fork would pay for it."
"No," Stephen said, "the fork is an innocent party. I'd aim for your hand," and he didn't think at all about what it would actually be like to—to put his mouth against Marcus's fingers, his knuckles; to bite him, gentle, deliberate, and not to pay him back for confronting Stephen with this ridiculous confection, not really, but just teasing, the way they were always doing—
The point was, the dessert was rich and dark and very good, and they settled in to squabble warmly over the last piece of it as if they weren't both already full.
When it was finally gone, Stephen sat back in his chair with a sigh. He didn't want to get up yet. He didn't want the evening to be over. And Fresh Air wasn't the kind of place where the staff started shooting you dirty looks for taking your time, so he could probably give himself at least five more minutes to indulge in this: the whole thing, from the memory of his own surprise at finding Marcus outside his door to the taste of chocolate lingering in his mouth, the satisfied fullness of his stomach; the awareness that even if he ended up back in his quarters alone, after this, there would still be the balloons, the flowers—there would still be something, some trace of Marcus, left to savor.
"You have had a good time tonight, I hope," Marcus said quietly.
Stephen looked up and met his eyes, and smiled. "Yes," he said, and then raised an eyebrow. "I'd say it's been the best anniversary I've ever celebrated with my husband, in fact."
"Mm, stiff competition, that," Marcus murmured.
Which was only as much as Stephen had been asking for, making that quip in the first place; but abruptly it didn't seem quite right to leave it at that. He made his smile briefly wider, to acknowledge Marcus's return volley, and then he let it slide away. "But—sincerely, Marcus," he said, "I know it couldn't have been easy for you to arrange all of this, and I appreciate it."
He meant it. But the words came out of his mouth, and they were—they were just words, not nearly enough; they didn't capture half of what it actually felt like, to remember the evening he'd had in his head as he stepped off the transport tube, to compare it to the way the real thing had gone and to know it wouldn't have happened if not for Marcus choosing to make it.
"Nonsense," Marcus was saying, "it was nothing, really—"
"I'm serious," Stephen said.
But that got him nothing but a wry smile. "As you so often are, darling," Marcus said mildly, because of course he wasn't really listening to a single thing Stephen was trying to tell him, would rather push them back to the joke than accept Stephen's gratitude for what it was.
"I mean it, Marcus," Stephen said, and he let the frustration propel him out of his chair, leaned across the table and took Marcus's face in his hand. Marcus was staring up at him, a little wild-eyed, but he didn't move away, didn't jerk back from Stephen's touch, and clearly he had some idea what was coming if he didn't, so—Stephen did it.
He didn't linger over it, didn't ask for anything in particular. He pressed a firm, deliberate kiss to Marcus's stupid mouth, felt the slackly startled shape of it and the ticklish brush of Marcus's mustache.
And then he broke it, and said, "Thank you," against Marcus's cheek, as pointed as he could make it when his voice had gone just a little hoarse on him, before he straightened up and let go.
Marcus was still staring at him, but not the same way as before—he was flushed, now, faint color high in his cheeks, and he wet his mouth, once and then again, and said unsteadily, "Well, when you put it that way, ah. You're welcome."
It had been an idiotic thing to do. Stephen knew that. But it had won him the argument, and it had put that look on Marcus's face, and he'd wanted to do it too badly not to; which meant there was no way he was going to be able to figure out how to regret it.
Marcus insisted on walking Stephen back to his quarters from the restaurant.
He'd recovered enough, by the time they were stepping out of Fresh Air, to insist that it was only as much as anyone ought to do for their cherished spouse; and Stephen managed by the skin of his teeth not to kiss him again to make him cut it out.
He couldn't stop thinking about it, though. And the walk was long enough, Marcus's shoulder brushing his, Marcus's warm voice in his ear nattering on endearingly about why exactly the station's central core was considered such an exceptional view anyway, seeing as the stars, Epsilon III and the fall of its sun's light across its surface, would probably be both prettier and more interesting—Stephen kept thinking about it, and by the time they actually reached his quarters, he'd made a decision.
They came to a stop at the door, almost simultaneous. Stephen turned and met Marcus's eyes, and Marcus cleared his throat and said, "Well—"
Marcus was wearing that Ranger uniform: the open front, and the deep V in the robe underneath it, over the shirt beneath that. Stephen curled two fingers into that V, and said, "Stay."
Marcus blinked. "Stephen," he said, in a cautious sort of tone, "rest assured it was my pleasure, and you've already been generous enough to—thank me, much more effusively than I—"
For crying out loud. "This isn't gratitude, Marcus. Please: stay."
And at last, he let himself give in again—kissed Marcus, and not to make a point or to quiet him, but simply because he couldn't stand not to be doing it. He lifted a hand to Marcus's jaw, rubbed his thumb through the unfamiliar texture of Marcus's beard, and Marcus made a noise into his mouth that he decided he definitely wanted to hear again.
When he was done, he moved just far enough to say, low, into Marcus's ear, "It was a nice anniversary. But it was also a pretty damn good first date."
Marcus was briefly silent. Stephen could hear the click of his throat working. "I, ah. Wasn't sure whether you'd be inclined to see it that way," he admitted at last.
"Well, I did," Stephen told him, "so come on, already," and he reached back to find the door access with one hand without looking away from Marcus, waited for the hiss that said it had opened for him and then took a step backward through it and drew Marcus with him.
"It was quite unkind of you to wear that suit, you know," Marcus said unevenly.
"Was it," Stephen murmured, and took another step, another, until the door had swished shut again behind them.
"Oh, yes," Marcus said. "Made it very difficult to think."
"Lucky you don't do too much of that, then," Stephen said, warm, and Marcus put a hand to his chest, pantomiming the impact of a mortal blow, so Stephen was laughing, bright and helpless, when he pulled Marcus in to kiss him again.